


the scale of disaster

by seventeencrows



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Found Family, assorted vaguely connected one-shots, canon-typical violence for both pac rim and w359, if it's become more complex and involved than you originally expected clap your hands, if you're overly invested in this au clap your hands, oh no for sure that's supposed to be on fire, we are totally fine and have this handled
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2018-11-14 08:56:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11204676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventeencrows/pseuds/seventeencrows
Summary: surviving the end of the world is one thing. surviving the people who are supposed to be saving it with you is a different matter entirely.i: alana takes the "buddy system" perhaps a bit too literallyii: lovelace and kepler get exactly what they didn't ask foriii. eiffel pleads the fifth and really wishes he could drink one





	1. she is air, and it is enough

**Author's Note:**

> oh hey, look, the au i said i'd never write and now have about five chapters' worth of material for. this is entirely self-indulgent because i love both wolf 359 and pacific rim, and you are welcome to scream into that void with me
> 
> title of the story is from this quote: “It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you've made, and there's this panic because you don't know yet the scale of disaster you've left yourself open to.” ― Kazuo Ishiguro

_It’s unfathomable,_ they tell her, _it's unbelievable and impossible and it can't be done—_

And Alana Maxwell does it _anyway_ , first when the side of her Jaeger explodes in a snarl of scrap metal and Kaiju guts and takes her old partner with it, then again in front of a gaggle of bemused scientists and skeptical COs, and then a next time when a Category III appears twenty miles off the coast and she disobeys a direct order to scramble into a Jaeger that practically launches itself—

_You shouldn't be able to do that,_ they say, the Jaeger AI system is unresponsive, is primitive, is not _alive_ —like Alana doesn’t bleed binary, like she hasn't screamed into the nuclear core of her great metal monster and heard it shout back her name and—

And the first time she does it, it's an accident. Her world kaleidoscopes down to shrieking wind and biting spray and the taste of someone else's dying breath in her own mouth and the Jaeger stands. Wobbles, battered and sparking and alone in the waves while the Kaiju drags Alana’s arm and chest plate and partner down to the seafloor, but stands. There’s not enough left of it to put up a decent fight, she knows—there’s not enough left of _her,_  half her brain, half her _self_ breathing seawater and the other half aching with the aftershock, there’s no way she’s enough to pilot Hyperion back to shore, let alone send the Kaiju packing.

Alana can still feel the threads of her connection, fraying fast and fading away, wonders how long it will last, how long seeing her shadow will feel like carrying another person’s casket on her shoulders, but there’s—something else? Like a hum that’s been there since the beginning, but _louder_ now, not just bioelectric feedback and the surging of the trillion odds and ends that keep Hyperion running smoothly but something more. Something—alive?

She’s surprised that sharing memories goes both ways when the Drift reconnects, that while they (they?) flit their way through Alana’s awkward family dinners and midnight rifle-shooting practices and giggle when they both watch ten year old Alana fall off her bed the first time the robot she builds flickers awake and types out a response, while they (?) peer through her Alana peers right back, sees the first line of code, and then another, and then a hundred thousand more, the spark of awareness, of comprehension, the first time she _(she!)_ hears her own voice, automated, droning, robotic, but _hers—_

They make it back to shore, using a Kaiju femur as a cane. Alana stumbles back to her room and sleeps for twenty-six hours and by the time she wakes up again, the entire world knows her name.

First comes the battery of tests that only feel invasive because of how the lab techs grimace and smile at her, apologies painted across the enamel of their teeth; they don’t understand what it is to be flayed open before another person, so far down beyond blood and bone and cell and every other scraping they take from her to spirit away to their labs. She (!) is as easy to pick apart as Alana, easier almost, and the technicians carry down boxes of bioelectric circuitry and winding printouts of code along with test tubes of blood and spit. The psychological tests that Cutter conducts, the unspoken implication that this is brilliant but it is _wrong_ , not wrong enough for them to stop but enough that Alana has been found wanting in the most basic thing that makes her human.

The psychological examinations come back fine. The endless test tubes yield no abnormalities. This is the best Drift connection Alana Maxwell has ever been a part of. It’s almost like she was built for it.

Then comes the kill record, the media frenzy, the crackle of static she feels arc across her tongue and shriek feedback into every microphone shoved in her face, in the way her partner can retreat into the obscurity of binary and algorithms after every kill, every successful miracle-mission and Alana has to play nice and say hello and _smile, why doesn’t she ever smile?_ The feeling of Jacobi at her back, worried and not understanding but unwavering in his bulldog, steel-trap support—he may not get it but he’ll sure as shit clobber anyone to tries to touch it—the press conference that grinds to a screeching halt when Kepler steps in front of the mongrel horde that’s slobbering for a good sound bite and gestures to the ground-zero trench they’re using as a stage for their freak show and asks them _what, exactly, does Alana have to smile about?_

The Jaegers, they’re told in the Ranger Academy, the Jaegers are a second skin, a coat of armour, yours to wear and wield in equal measure, to keep people _safe_ —but theirs now is cradle and coffin both. She and Alana are so much _more-than_ now, a nesting-doll powerhouse, unstoppable and inseparable with copper wire veins that lead to a heart that beats in time to the roar of a nuclear engine—

_The AI can't do this,_ they tell her.

_The AI can decide that for herself,_ she tells them back, and besides—

“And besides,” says the AI, in a voice that is entirely her own, “she prefers it when you call her Hera.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from lionara s.t.m.o.l's poem "ignition"


	2. only as intense

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it me, creeping in to update a fic that no one was reading anyway
> 
> title is from mark helprin's _freddy and fredericka:_ “disdain is only as intense as similarity.”

“I can’t _believe_ you broke Colonel Kepler’s _nose—”_

“I didn’t break it,” Lovelace snaps, hissing as a medic wraps her wrist up tight, “I just—banged him up a little.” 

“That’s—” Eiffel has no business looking scandalized and yet here he is, huffing and puffing in the middle of medical like he wasn’t happy to see someone put a fist in Kepler’s face too, “That’s even _worse,_ if you only knocked him around and he broke your wrist—”

“Eiffel.” She’ll put hands on him too if it’ll get him to shut up a minute. “It’s not broken. It’s just,” she pauses, hedges, picks her words carefully, “just bent out of shape. A little.”

“Oh, it’s broken alright,” Hera chimes in from the overhead, “or fractured, at least. And you gave Colonel Kepler a pretty bad concussion to keep him in medical for a week.” The static rises and falls like a hum and that smug little tin can, Hera was _enjoying_ this. Lovelace grits her teeth as Hera adds, “Not to mention, you’ve benched one of the Jaegers for an entire _month.”_

Eiffel, bless his too-big heart and the too-big mouth he’s got to match, glances at Lovelace and tries to help. “Yeah, but isn’t that one less Jaeger for you to worry about?”

There’s a certain sort of primness Hera’s voice gets when it comes to chastising Lovelace—Isabel’s noticed. “It’s also one less Jaeger to have on hand when the great big sea monsters come crawling out of the ocean.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Lovelace drops her head into her undamaged hand and really, truly, considers how long thirty days is. “Oh.”

 

The month takes _forever_ to pass.

It takes almost as long to go by as it takes Lovelace to groan out the word “For _—ever,”_ sprawled out on Minkowski’s bunk with one arm thrown dramatically over her face. Minkowski, with the long-suffering patience that it takes to survive the military _and_ a marriage (and a funeral but it’s too soon, too raw, they _don’t talk about that),_ doesn’t shove her off the bed or hit her with a book or even scoff in her general direction. Instead she rolls over, lands one good, probably-unintentional kick to Lovelace’s shin, and goes back to reading.

The universe, in some bizarre reprieve or trick of fate, doesn’t completely rain fire on their asses while Lovelace and Kepler are benched. The War Clock only goes off twice and even then the Kaiju are small(ish); Maxwell and Hera are more than enough to handle them, which is—surprising. (Lovelace is sure they’re a good team, and all of Hyperion’s stats come back in the green but—but Hera can hardly turn the right light on sometimes, so sue her if Lovelace holds her breath when Hyperion goes stomping off into the deep. She’s not Maxwell’s biggest fan, she’s gotten so tired of watching people leave and not come back.)

The idyllic break from fire and brimstone shoves Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot up to the first slot on the roster, and despite how much Lovelace and Kepler actively despise one another, they’re both itching to get back. The Drift isn’t a noble connection of two minds as one enlightened being or whatever for them as much as it is, quite simply, a means to an end. There’s memories and feelings and sensations where their separate minds blur together, sure, but they don’t dwell on them or really even _care—_ anything to get out there and get something _done._

Kepler always tells stories as they’re being hooked up to their Jaeger—stupid, long-winded, ridiculous stories that Lovelace has no time for but listens to anyway; there’s something about his cadence, his drawl, that ebbs and flows and settles her, dials the screaming in her head down to a dull roar. He’s a _dick,_ and his stories are shit, but—but it helps. She never tells him to shut up.

(Isabel Lovelace stomped off into the briny deep with Sam Lambert at her side and woke up in a fucking dinghy a year later, a mile out from a Shatterdome halfway across the world from the one she left, and by the time she got home all that was waiting for her was a graveyard. She’ll take what she can get.)

 

When their time is _finally_ up, it happens in such a fast-spinning blur that it all smears together in Lovelace’s head—alarm red and Conn Pod blue and suit black and Drift white and then it’s just muscle memory, just the push and pull as they strain against one another, so at odds in who they are as people that it _works,_ that they can fight as one unstoppable whirlwind of quicksilver rage and thunderstorm force. It’s all textbook, really—the Kaiju rears up from the sea, they duck and feint and feel the weight of fang and flesh under their hands as they beat it back to wherever the hell it came from, and then—

And then the Kaiju suddenly, improbably, wildly, stops.

Mid-blow, claws glistening sea-wet in the air between them as it cocks its head to the side and _watches_ them, studies them for long enough that Kepler can hiss, “Are you seeing this?” back to LOCCENT, and then—

And then, it turns to slither back into the water like it was never there in the first place.

 

If she had to pick the single, solitary thing she appreciates about Director Cutter, Lovelace would have to say it was his blatant refusal (inability?) to beat around the bush.

“You’re terrible for each other,” he tells them, not twenty minutes after WTF stumbles back into the Shatterdome and they yank their helmets off and stare at each other in blank confusion. “Your scores are horrific side by side, and given your propensity for testing the limits of your government-funded health insurance by pounding each other into the pavement _outside_ of the Kwoon Room, I hesitate to even consider what you’d do to each other if we put you in there.” Cutter hums, taps his fingers against the edge of his desk. “Do you know why your partnership is so effective?”

Kepler would look a hell of a lot more ridiculous sitting in the chair next to Lovelace with a chai in his hand, if Lovelace didn’t have one herself. “No, sir.”

“Shame.” Cutter leans back in his seat, smile stretched just this side of too wide—like he’s enjoying this, like he _expected_ it. “The reason your Drift is so effective has nothing to do with your scores, or your similarities, or your highly receptive neural networks—which I’m sure are lovely and very elaborate, don’t get me wrong! But what makes you such a good pair is your _drive._ Your single-mindedness, just how badly you want to get out there and get that job _done.”_

He pauses, looks at them expectantly. “I see,” Lovelace mutters, just to fill the space.

“I’m sure you do, Isabel.” Cutter takes a sip of his own drink. Lovelace has never seen his desk without it or seen the cup empty, come to think of it, not in all the times she’d been called in here when the Hephaestus Shatterdome first requisitioned her back home after her—

_Cutter called it her “silly little adventure”, Minkowski called it her “detour”, the military and the media called it “abandoning ship”, Eiffel and Hera tried not to call it anything at all and Isabel didn’t know what she called it, only that it was a word that started on a scream and ended on a gasp, on the feeling of her own nails digging into her skin and pulling—_

“I’m sure you do, Isabel,” Cutter is saying like Lovelace isn’t circling the drain in his patent leather office chair, “just like I’m sure today’s events are a fluke, one that our super special science staff will soon explain if they like remaining in this Shatterdome’s employ, and—” He chuckles, laces his fingers together and watches them like he's about to lunge teeth-first for one of their throats, “and it would be a shame if such a, ah, _productive_ partnership were to be shelved because of an, “ Lovelace keeps her eyes fixed on the steam rising from Cutter’s cup like her life depends on it (it just might), “anomaly.”

She’s starting to answer when Kepler clamps a hand on her healing wrist and grips _hard._ Lovelace jolts and his grip tightens again, but Kepler’s eyes are on Cutter. “Of course,” he says, mild and pleasant and with flint against the backs of his teeth, just looking for a spark, “sir.”

He keeps his fucking hands off her until Cutter’s door is shut behind them and then he’s got her wrist in his grip again, yanking her closer and hissing, “Whatever happened in there and however we’re going to _deal with this,_ we both know damn well that thing wasn’t looking at _us._ It was looking at _you.”_

Lovelace could deny everything (what was there to deny? something, obviously, something wrong with her, something she’s _done)._ She could call Kepler’s bluff, because he had _no idea what he’s talking about._ Hell, she could punch him in the face again.

Instead, she twists her arm free and scowls. “What am I supposed to do, call it back? Invite it in for tea and cookies and a solid heart-to-heart?”

“Don’t be such an—” Kepler scowls to match her, runs a hand through his hair. “Obviously not. All I’m asking is you not do anything stupid.” _Again,_ is the implication, _like the last time, we all know how the sea calls to you, Isabel, and whisks you right away, brings you back different, broken—_

Digging her nails into her palms hard enough to leave a mark, Lovelace relaxes. Makes a point of it, drops her shoulders, straightens her spine, does her job and kills all the monsters, even the ones in the wine-dark sea behind her eyes. “So what do we do now?”

“Now?” Kepler drags out the word, shifts the mood from something that threatens to strangle them both to something bearable, breathable. He has that smug look on his face again like he’s cooking up a tall tale and—

And strangely, oddly, it puts Lovelace at ease. This, she knows. This, she can handle. Everything else can come later.

“Chess?” Kepler asks, and it snaps her from her thoughts. She arches an eyebrow. He laughs, elaborates. “You? Me? Now?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my shit brain is convinced that the second 12/26 comes and goes, all interest in wolf will cease to exist and there will be a mass exodus from the fandom and the discord and i’ll be an isolated little sadsack again. which is to say, it’s beating the drum for me to finish my………fourteen? fifteen? WIPs for this fandom before the show ends, so consider this my apology in advance


	3. exempt from resurrection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> two updates in one week? it's almost like i'm scrambling to meet a self-imposed deadline or something
> 
> the title is from a line in kay ryan's poem, "waste"

“Eiffel! Officer Eiffel! Could you answer a few questions?”

Everything is so goddamn _loud._

Honestly, he hadn't realized how much of this monster fighting business would involve _talking to people._ Eiffel’s a chatty person, wind him up and watch him go, but the press conferences that come after a successful kill always set him off on the wrong foot. They’re too loud and too bright and about ten minutes in he’s aching for a drink and it’s soon enough that their Drift still curls up their spines and settles across their shoulders, and he can feel the spike of Minkowski’s concern between his own eyes. But it makes an unfortunate amount of sense—people have to _like_ them, have to feel safe with them around, have to know which giant monster that storms in and destroys their towns is the one they have to cheer for. A press conference after a battle, as Cutter is so terribly fond of telling them, is better than a funeral.

They always call to him, never Minkowski, when they first take their seats at the table in the press room. There’s something about the set of her shoulders when they come out of the Drift, the angle of her jaw or the way she tilts her chin that sends them running in Eiffel’s direction—he gets it, he does; Doug Eiffel can barely manage to live in his own head most days and it’s a travesty, a fucking _war crime,_ that Minkowski has to sift through his endless bullshit every time they go out and do their jobs. It’s not fair that she has to relive his worst moments over and over again _and_ go MMA on Cthulhu’s ass while Eiffel’s brain plays through the greatest hits of the worst day of her life—

But right. Yeah. They don’t talk about that.

_Instead,_ they’re smiling and waving and leaning closer to the mics, to be heard, to make for a good sound bite and picture in the paper, as reporters churn through the same set of questions they always. Eiffel ticks them off on his fingers under the cover of the table they’re sat at, and when Minkowski swats at his hands they’re both grinning. (Lovelace has a list all drawn up; she likes to run straight down it and answer the questions before the reporters can even ask them. There’s a reason Lovelace isn’t allowed to do interviews anymore.)

How did they like their new crewmates?

The new crewmates are _great._

(Doug is never not impressed at how Minkowski sounds so genuinely goddamn interested every time she has to answer this question.)

Quite a whirlwind of new people.

Oh yes.

Director Cutter only replaced Commander Zhang six months ago, wasn’t it?

(The media knew before they did; Doug remembers hauling himself out of the Conn Pod after a kill to a LOCCENT full of people crowding around a television, watching a report on their CO’s transfer before Zhang even knew about it herself.)

Yes, six months. Brought Colonel Kepler, Dr. Maxwell, and Mr. Jacobi with him and they’re just _great._ Besides, they’ve had practice adjusting to new crew ever since Captain Lovelace was found off the coast of the Hermes Shatterdome and been requisitioned back to the Hephaestus a year ago and she’s just great, too. Everything is just—

Just great?

...Yes.

Wonderful. What were their thoughts on the new wall going up on the West Coast?

No thoughts. Anything to keep the Kaiju back.

Even if it costs them their job?

Even if it costs them their job. (And their lives, and their _sanity, their ability to sleep through a night without waking up in a panic, without skulking across a dark and empty Shatterdome to crawl into bed next to someone who gets it, who knows what sort of monsters the dark paints on the insides of your eyelids—)_

Ahem. Yes. Even if it costs them their jobs.

It's all questions they've heard before, smiled and nodded and answered before, going right down the goddamn list until—

“Officer Eiffel, what can you tell us about Anne?”

New reporter. He sees Minkowski frown and glance off camera at Rachel Young, who shrugs at them but keeps her eyes on the reporter when she says her name and affiliation and Doug wonders how long the newbie’s going to keep her job. Minkowski grips his hand under the table and smiles wide and bright at the cameras, at the reporter, and he can hear her inhale, hears her draw a breath to distract them or bullshit them or somehow, as always, clean up his goddamn mess for him.

It’s honestly a fair question, when he really thinks about it—the world is supposed to love them, to trust them, and he’s lying through his teeth every time he puts on that helmet, every time he gets up on this stupid stage and pretends this whole thing isn’t just a potshot at his own selfish redemption. All he’s worth is cannon (Kaiju?) fodder but with a giant metal monster at his back he can pretend he’s making a difference to pay for his crimes, to save enough people to make up for the ones he wrecked in the first place. Other people _applied_ to the Ranger Academy but Cutter found him special, in a hole so deep in what was left of Harris County _(“They weren’t going to waste the time to evacuate the prisons in a beach-side town, were they? My, it’s a good thing we got to you before you started growing gills! A different department oversees that research, I’m afraid, and they’re not nearly as, ah, friendly as I am.”),_ so deep that climbing into a giant robot to die for his planet seemed like the easy way out.

Douglas Eiffel is really, really good at taking the easy way out.

It’s what got him in that hole in the first place.

Minkowski is still talking, somewhere beyond the dull roar in his ears that sounds a lot like brakes squealing and the wail of sirens, of a child who can’t hear the answer she’s looking for, not anymore—Minkowski is still talking, still covering for him, still pulling all his dead weight, but she grinds to a halt when he squeezes her fingers. He doesn’t look at her when she turns to him, the question in the curve of her eyebrows, in the arch of that jaw that sends everyone running.

Eiffel leans into the microphone, waits for the clamour to stop, and says straight into the camera, “I can't tell you a goddamn thing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> actually working on something i'm supposed to instead of updating my self-indulgent au (well, one of my self-indulgent aus)? me? perish the thought


End file.
